Alex must stop being a bedroom area, says Hart
ALEXANDRA – Chris Hart says they want the townships to cease being bedroom areas only while residents work elsewhere.
More than 30 small entrepreneurs from Alexandra will be funded by Alex Investment Fund to ensure they take their businesses to another level.
This will be the other aspect of the fund besides funding the revitalisation of the township’s infrastructure, said Chris Hart, the fundraiser for the makeover project and executive chairperson of the Sandton-based Impact Investment Africa.
Hart told Alex News that the Alex fund had committed to raise seed capital to support SMMEs. “The makeover of Alex is not about parachuting into the township and doing wonderful things and then leave. It is about helping uplift the people and the community has to play a pivotal role in this.”
Hart emphasised that their idea of rejuvenating Alex businesses would be of mutual benefit. “Yes, we would love to see some investment by major businesses in Johannesburg and Sandton in particular but we also want to see Alex SMMEs being assisted to venture into business in Sandton itself and other areas of Johannesburg.
“We want the money of the people of Alexandra to stay in the township as opposed to them making road trips to Sandton’s big supermarkets, clothing shops and other outlets. These outlets must open up in Alex in partnerships with the very same SMMEs, so that money generated in Alex remains in Alex to uplift the township and its people.
He added that those Alex SMMEs that wanted to venture beyond the township must also be assisted to do so.
“Gone are the days of limiting people and confining them to desolate places that turn out to be bedroom areas only.
“We also want to create a Vilakazi Street-style of macro businesses that will attract tourists into Alex in the same way as the Soweto venture does. Alex has the richest history in this country but no one is tapping into that history to expose it, not just to the rest of the country, but the world at large.”
Alexandra was the first township to be created in the country and the only one where its residents actually bought and owned property in an urban area that was only the preserve of white people under the Land Tenure Act and the subsequent establishment of an apartheid state.
The township was once a vibrant home of all things music, dance, theatre, gangsters and sport be it boxing, football or netball.
“This is the rich history that we should be promoting to uplift the standard of Alex and take it out of the doldrums it finds itself in today,” Hart concluded.
